Question

Can anyone explain the following immediate window behavior:

Debug.Print mDb.DatabaseOptions
Method arguments must be enclosed in parentheses.

Debug.Print(mDb.DatabaseOptions)
Value of type 'DatabaseOptions' cannot be converted to 'String'.

? mDb.DatabaseOptions
{Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.DatabaseOptions}
    AnsiNullDefault: False
    ...
    UserData: Nothing

According to MS documentation

The question mark (?) is an alias for Debug.Print

This is clearly not 100% true, as the two statements exhibit differing behaviors in the example above. If it makes any difference, I am using the Express Edition of VB 2008.

Answer 1

There is a difference between the Debug.Print method and the Debug.Print command.

Commands are usually inputted in the Command.Window. To input commands in the Immediate window you need to append > before the command name so:

?mDb.DatabaseOptions

is an alias for the command:

>Debug.Print mDb.DatabaseOptions

not an alias for calling the method:

Debug.Print(mDb.DatabaseOptions)